Consent in Medicine Matters

It’s been a few weeks since I have posted an article to Medium. This is because on June 3rd, I got top surgery. Between healing and catching up on other work since then, it’s been very hectic. I’m very glad to be back to writing again.

Top surgery should be an incredibly joyful and landmark experience for many trans people. For those unaware, “top surgery” refers to a procedure that is functionally a double mastectomy — removing breast tissue to ease dysphoria that it creates in many trans men and nonbinary people.

My top surgery did not go as planned. At the last minute I was transferred to a different surgical facility than I was planning to use on the basis of BMI (fatphobia is rampant in trans healthcare, but that’s a subject for another article). My experience was terrifying and violating, and emphasized to me how much work needs to be done on the issue of consent in medicine, especially for marginalized groups.

The evening of the day that it had happened, I wrote up my thoughts and memories of the experience on twitter. I’ve linked both the original thread and copied over the text of the tweets here. I feel that the original words give a good indication of my emotional and mental state at the time; dazed, afraid, in pain, and all of it made much, much worse by the treatment I had received.

Content Warnings for violations of consent, implied sexual assault, restraints, medicine, surgery, blood, wounds, stitches, ableism